Achieving Breakthrough Service
Driving Performance and Profitability
Increasing competition and rising client demands have intensified the pressure on companies around the globe to provide exceptional service and create unprecedented customer value. To achieve this type of breakthrough value, businesses must understand the interrelated behavior and needs of their three key constituencies—clients, employees, and investors. Most companies that care about service focus exclusively on providing good customer service, not on satisfying employees and investors along the way. As a result, they often create unsustainable service strategies and overlook opportunities to increase top-line growth and profits. In Achieving Breakthrough Service, you will learn how to design and deliver exceptional service models that enable employees, owners, and customers to thrive simultaneously.
What You Can Expect
This leadership development program will provide the tools and ideas you need to drive satisfaction, commitment, and loyalty among both clients and employees—and to lead your organization to improved profitability and accelerated growth.
Your Course of Study
Immersed in a series of thought-provoking lectures, interactive case studies, and hands-on workshops, you will explore the strategic steps required to achieve service breakthroughs and deliver differentiated products and services. Along the way, you will acquire the skills to identify and overcome the persistent obstacles to performance, and create long-term value for customers, employees, and shareholders.
Who Is Right for the Program
Specifically designed for senior managers in service firms and in manufacturing firms with service-based strategies, this program is most useful to individuals with the authority to make decisions and initiate change across the organization. Executives with responsibility for marketing, operations, strategy, and human resources have had great success in this program. To encourage organization-wide impact, admission preference is given to senior management teams composed of four to eight individuals. The curriculum is appropriate for managers in business-to-consumer and business-to-business organizations.
| Fee: | $8,000 |
View other service management programs
The program fee covers tuition, books, case materials, accommodations, and most meals.
Programs, dates, fees, and faculty are subject to change.
In accordance with Harvard University policy, Harvard Business School does not discriminate against any person on the basis of race, color, sex or sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, national or ethnic origin, political beliefs, veteran status, or disability in admission to, access to, treatment in, or employment in its programs and activities.
What You Can Expect
This leadership training program focuses on practical strategies for delivering breakthrough service to your customers, employees, and shareholders. From increasing loyalty and enhancing cross-selling efforts to reducing costs and measuring performance, you will gain the tools and skills to boost employee and client satisfaction levels—while also increasing profits and growth. As a result, you will return to your organization better prepared to:
- Help average employees deliver exceptional value
- Enhance loyalty through targeted customer retention efforts
- Deliver more value to existing clients
- Use customer insights and data to enhance research and development efforts
- Measure the value of investments in human capital
- Improve hiring and training initiatives throughout the organization
- Link employee incentives to employee performance enterprise-wide
- Explicitly and creatively fund investments in service excellence
- Reduce costs by investing exclusively in service levels that clients value
- Align service cultures with strategic choices
- Customize leadership decisions to specific performance goals
- Identify and resolve personal barriers that impact organizational performance
How Will My Organization Benefit?
Executive Education programs at Harvard Business School are a significant investment for both you and your organization. Going far beyond the basic transmission of skills and theories, each leadership development program provides applicable lessons in the classroom that can be implemented successfully within your organization. You will acquire a fresh perspective on global business from our groundbreaking curriculum, world-renowned faculty, and an accomplished group of elite peers from around the world.
"After years of traditional training, this was the best learning method I have ever experienced. The professors were passionate, the sessions were captivating, and the peer-group discussions were powerful. Through the case studies and lectures, I could see the direct link between service excellence and profit growth. My company sent a group of managers to share the same state-of-the-art concepts and tools, so implementing changes was much easier when we returned."
François Chevillotte [Director of Customer Experience], Computacenter France, France
Your Course of Study
To maximize the value of the time you invest on campus, this rigorous, content-rich curriculum will be covered in a condensed time frame. By examining leading-edge research, real-world case studies, and actionable ideas, you will gain greater insight into the strategic service vision, the economics of client relationships, and the link between customer satisfaction and customer behavior. You will acquire the tools to leverage information technology and process reengineering for competitive advantage, while exploring the role of leadership in change management.
Throughout the program, you will study various organizations that have successfully delivered differentiated products and services at the lowest possible costs. Topics will include how to:
- Align the "performance trinity" components—management and leadership, culture and values, and strategy and vision
- Enhance the value equation for employees, customers, and investors
- Identify and revisit the shared values at the heart of the organization's culture
- Develop a value-centered method for measuring and recognizing performance
- Hardwire the organization to achieve desired results
- Improve learning and innovation efforts through effective knowledge transfer
- Understand the importance of treating employees like customers, and customers like employees
- Assess the lifetime value of unique client segments—including antagonists, hostages, mercenaries, loyalists, and apostles—within the organization's portfolio of customers
Optional Session
To address your own company-specific challenges, you may choose to participate in an optional coaching session at the close of the program. Led by HBS faculty members, this session enables you to redefine your service vision as you begin applying the lessons from the program to maximize new opportunities within your organization.
"ABS gave me the confidence not to compromise on truths, which will provide me the competitive edge I was looking for. Business is about creating and keeping loyal customers—and the best loyalty program comes from delivering value to customers as a result of their last interaction with you. The program has changed me as an individual, and will certainly benefit my colleagues and the firm as a whole."
Pratap Nambiar [Regional Executive Partner, Global Markets], KPMG Asia Pacific Limited, Singapore
Who Is Right for the Program
Achieving Breakthrough Service is intended for a select group of senior managers in service firms and manufacturing firms with service-based strategies. To enhance learning through exposure to a wide array of perspectives and experiences, HBS uses a thoughtful admissions process that ensures the selection of highly qualified participants who represent diverse companies, industries, and countries. While individual leaders are invited to attend, teams of at least four senior executives will gain the most from this intensive offering. During the program, your team will work with a faculty adviser to develop a customized service model for your organization. Post program, your team will have the opportunity to return to campus for a final presentation and a critique of your proposed model.
Visit the admissions section for details about our application process.
Past Participants Represented:
| Industries | Nationalities | ||||
| 3% | Chem/Pharm/Bio | 6% | Africa | ||
| 1% | Communications | 4% | Asia | ||
| 4% | Consumer Products | 4% | Australia/NZ | ||
| 10% | Financial | 37% | Europe | ||
| 4% | High Technology | 5% | Latin America | ||
| 6% | Manufacturing | 7% | Middle East | ||
| 11% | Nonprofit | 36% | North America | ||
| 8% | Other | 1% | Other | ||
| 14% | Other Services | ||||
| 17% | Professional Services | ||||
| 1% | Raw Materials/Energy | ||||
| 5% | Real Estate/Construction | ||||
| 6% | Retail Services | ||||
| 10% | Utilities/Telecommunications | ||||
Participating Companies Have Included:
Boeing Company |
Nokia |
"I have never attended a more intense course on services and strategy. It gave me new approaches, a condensed amalgam of knowledge, and some new insights into behavior and customer satisfaction. I especially enjoyed the opportunity to meet people from different business niches and share best practices."
Marcelo Gabarra [Diretor de Engenharia e Produção], Rolls-Royce Brasil Gas Turbine Services, Brazil
Meet the Program Faculty
Like all Harvard Business School Executive Education programs, Achieving Breakthrough Service is developed and taught by a core faculty of HBS professors. Our faculty members are widely recognized as skilled educators, groundbreaking researchers, and award-winning authors.
Through publishing, consulting, and teaching, they leverage their business expertise and field-based research to create new knowledge and enduring concepts that shape the practice of management. The result is a teaching team that exposes participants to multiple perspectives, challenging their thinking and encouraging new practices that result in superior business leadership. For more detailed biographies, click on each faculty name.
Dennis W. Campbell, Associate Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Accounting and Management Unit.
Frances X. Frei, UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management. Member of the Technology and Operations Management Unit; and faculty chair of "Achieving Breakthrough Service."
Das Narayandas, James J. Hill Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Marketing Unit; and faculty chair of the "Program for Leadership Development" and faculty cochair of "Building Client Management Capabilities in Professional Service Firms."
Ananth Raman, UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics. Member of the Technology and Operations Management Unit.
Anita L. Tucker, Lumry Family Assistant Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Technology and Operations Management Unit.
"The faculty provided an intellectual view of business service models in varying degrees of execution that was easy for me to assimilate with my leadership style. As I engaged with other senior executives on common challenges, I learned from their varied experience as well. Since returning, I have applied all my learning and have simply underscored the direction in which I am leading my organization."
Bridget Moscatello [Vice President, Customer Operations], Empire Today, U.S.